véjà du, all over again

by | Saturday, September 04, 2010

A véjà du experience is about looking at a familiar situation but with fresh eyes, as if you’ve never seen it before. It forms the basis of an assignment I give in my CEP818, Creativity in Teaching & Learning course. The assignment is described in greater detail here, but the core idea is to take multiple photographs of some everyday object in such a way that the viewer cannot easily determine what the object is! More here.

Today, I spent some time with my kids re-doing the assignment. My son suggested taking pictures of his X-Box 360 but we finally went with an object selected by my daughter. Here are the pictures. What do you think it is?


A few randomly selected blog posts…

The new convergence

The new convergence

I recently received an email from dean recommending this post titled Thoughts on Now and Then by Andrew Hickey. In this extended essay Hickey provides his thoughts on the new Beatles remake, Now and Then. The essay is a thoughtful and loving analysis of human...

Putting technology first

Don Norman has a great essay titled Technology First, Needs Last that I strongly recommend. We have been making a similar argument in some of our more recent pieces, see here and here... What do you think of Norman's ideas? Read it first and come back here to discuss...

Update IV

Chris from Creativity Portal dropped off a "strong" message to me on my website (see it here). Just a couple of points. First, I have not received the email they sent me (I do not question the fact that they did send it) - just that I did not receive it. I checked my...

Forget MMORPG, its time for MMLSG

NYTimes article titled, Storming the Campuses on the next big thing on college campuses: GoCrossCampus! This new kind of a game (and game genre) has been described as Multiplayer Locally Social Gaming and the way it is spreading, it may soon need to add "Massively" to...

Technology & Literacy, bemoaning the youth of today 🙂

One often hears the criticism that students today don't know how to write... the part of the blame is placed on technology, on the limitations of texting and twittering! For instance, here are two quotes from a book review TXTNG: THE GR8 DB8 by Marcus Merkmann in the...

Scrivener vs. Writer

A NYTimes article on word-processing versus writing (or scrivenering??): An interface of one's own. What stood out was this description of writing being more than just the putting of words on a screen -- but rather of seeing it this complex, often non-linear...

APA & Torture

I had written previously (here and here) about the American Psychological Association's long connection with torture and other coercive information gathering techniques. I am still bothered by it. Today's NYTimes has a op-ed by Stanley Fish (titled Psychology and...

Design\Ethics\AI

Design\Ethics\AI

Technologies like remote proctoring software and advanced language models are no longer futuristic concepts. They're here, and they're reshaping how we learn and how we teach. But with these advancements come critical ethical considerations. The deployment of these...

Explore: To see … or not to see

I have been working with my kids on a series of short videos around the themes of Explore, Create, Share. These three words were used in my video mashup of a commercial (see the commercial AND my mashup here). Original music for this series was created by my cousin,...

8 Comments

  1. Punya Mishra

    A corkscrew it is! This is what the overall object really looks like.

    or click here to see all the images

    Reply
  2. Amy Strange

    I’m going to agree with Randy that it looks like a corkscrew.

    Reply
  3. Jung

    I think this is a part of the lawn spreader!!

    Reply
  4. Kylie

    Corkscrew?

    Reply
  5. Mary

    part of a table umbrella???

    Reply
  6. Heather Nordman

    Telescope?

    Reply
  7. Randy Johann

    It looks like a corkscrew.

    Reply

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